


Courage is the Quiet Voice

by Thuri



Series: 100 Prompts Fulfilled [3]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-06 23:56:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/424617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thuri/pseuds/Thuri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint talked, he talked plenty.</p>
<p>But for now he was content to watch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Courage is the Quiet Voice

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: 

He wasn’t _that_ quiet, Clint thought, watching the others from the corner of the room. He talked plenty, when it suited him. No, it hadn’t suited him lately, but these people were still almost strangers, weren’t they? A few months of acquaintance didn’t make them friends. 

Not Tasha, of course, but Tasha alone couldn’t make up for the other four. He could spar with her, watch TV with her, sit in silence and yes, even _talk_ to her, talk to her about the real shit, the shit only she and Coulson had ever heard. But it’d taken years to get there, years of work and pain and trust...and years of carefully preparing himself for the ultimate truth. She could disappear at any moment. He knew that, sure as he knew himself.

So could he.

So yes, he talked to her, he trusted her. But he didn’t depend on her for anything, other than to watch his back in a fight. She’d do that, so long as her mind was her own. Just as he’d do the same for her.

Coulson...Coulson heard more, yeah. He talked to Coulson more than anyone else. Enough that his handler had come to him at once astonished and concerned that his new team thought him quiet. 

But he’d always been quiet, before Coulson. Not when he was Hawkeye, no. Not on stage, there he’d shine, perform, mouth off for the audience. He hadn’t been quiet with Barney, not at first...but he certainly had with their father. Safer not to draw attention.

It’d been the same way in care, then at the circus, after. Keep quiet, do what you’re told, and things’d be better. He’d been an expert at taking orders, and at not asking questions. Such an expert he’d turned into a criminal without noticing and gotten his legs broken by his mentor for trying to leave the life. Yeah, maybe he’d learned to talk a little more, after that. At least to ask questions, when he needed to.

Silence with Coulson, though, had always been okay. He thought that might’ve been why he’d wanted to break it...Coulson didn’t ask him to. Hadn’t asked anything out of him, really. Just that he not destroy the apartment. And later, that he make the shot and fill out his paperwork after.

Clint could give him that. He’d ended up giving him more. Giving him everything, the longer Coulson stayed in his life, stayed a _friend_. It’d taken him half a dozen years to really believe Coulson wasn’t going to turn on him, wasn’t going to abandon him.

Wasn’t going to be like all the rest.

Tasha had been...different. The one shot he hadn’t taken. Her eyes had seemed to meet his through the scope and his finger had fallen off the trigger. The shot he’d planned and waited for for a solid week, and he hadn’t taken it.

Instead he’d brought her in, taken her to Coulson, and claimed she’d be worth the time and effort to recruit. He’d trusted his gut and Coulson to make it right. Stupid, maybe, but he’d been lucky.

Even then, he hadn’t begun to trust her for years, hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words to her after that mission until they’d been paired up for a mission in Budapest. Budapest, where her walls had fallen in the aftermath of the firefight, the near warzone their easy mission had become. She wasn’t a soldier, she hadn’t been prepared, for all her skills...and he remembered holding her hair back as she wretched and cried, cried for what she claimed had been the first time in a decade.

He believed her.

It had been that trust she’d shown in him, after years of knowing each other, that had led him to talk to her.

And now he was quiet here, with these others. These four bonafide superheroes, these larger than life men. These teammates he had somehow acquired, when before he’d been alone, a shadow in the darkness, an arrow from the night.

He had accepted the offer to move to Stark Tower, he had agreed--after attempting several times to tender his resignation, which both Fury and Coulson refused--to stay with SHIELD and the Avengers. He had worked as best he could, here and back on base to repair the damage he had done, to earn back the respect he’d lost, when his mind had not been his own.

He’d done everything he could, there, spoken more words than he had within him. Here, here in what was becoming a refuge...he had no more.

So he watched, from his quiet corner of the room, watched as Stark gave up trying to draw him out for more than a word or two and went around to Banner instead, turning his attention and his presence in another direction. Watched as Tasha neatly avoided them both, on her way to the kitchen to steal some of the cookies baked earlier.

Watched as Thor and Steve both laughed their way through yet another Wii game, entranced by the technology in front of them, though for vastly different reasons.

Watched as Coulson stepped off the elevator and into the common room, walking a bit stiffly, back to work so much sooner than he should’ve been, but back with them all the same. Clint raised his hand in greeting but didn’t move as the others raised voices in their own, distractions momentarily forgotten in welcome.

Yes, Clint talked, he talked plenty.

But for now he was content to watch.


End file.
